Reno Announces Review Of King Assassination

Investigation Will Be Considerably More Limited Than Fact-finding Exam Widow, Family Wanted

August 27, 1998|By DAVID JOHNSTON The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Janet Reno said on Wednesday that the Justice Department would conduct a limited examination of recently uncovered information in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Reno, who has labored for months to reach a decision, authorized a much narrower inquiry than the full review sought by King's widow, Coretta Scott King, and other members of the King family who had urged the Clinton administration to create a national fact-finding commission.

The accusations to be reviewed by the Justice Department's civil rights division include those by Lloyd Jowers, a former Memphis bar owner, and Donald Wilson, a former agent of the FBI. Both suggested that there might have been a conspiracy to kill King involving people in addition to James Earl Ray, the only person convicted of the murder.

``We hope this review will provide answers to new questions that have been raised about a tragedy that still haunts our nation,'' Reno said, promising a report on the findings.

Justice Department officials said that although investigators would impartially re-examine the allegations of a conspiracy, they had no reason to believe that Ray was wrongly convicted or that he was part of a wider plot.

Most investigators and historians who have reviewed the case in the 30 years after King's death have concluded that Ray fatally shot King as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

After his arrest Ray confessed and pleaded guilty, but soon recanted his confession. Until his death he hinted at a conspiracy, but never offered any evidence to support his claim. Ray was serving a 99-year sentence for the shooting when he died in April.

The killing has aroused such deep passions that the government has never fully succeeded in bringing the case to a convincing close. Ray's repeated, though unavailing, attempts to win a new trial helped keep the case alive. So did jailhouse interviews in which he said he took orders from a shadowy figure named Raoul, or Raul, who has never been identified.

This year, Wilson, the retired FBI agent, said that after the killing he had found two slips of paper in Ray's car that he said bore the name ``Raul.'' In response, FBI officials said that Wilson was not part of the search team that examined Ray's car and dismissed Wilson's evidence as a ``total fabrication.''

Questions have also been raised about a recent account by Jowers, the bar owner. In 1968, Jowers ran Jim's Grill, a cafe across the street from the Lorraine Motel. The cafe was a few doors down from the rooming house, the authorities have said, from which Ray fired the shot that killed King.

Jowers said in an interview on ABC's Primetime Live in 1993 that he hired King's killer and that the man was not Ray. Jowers said he hired the man for a Memphis produce dealer connected to organized crime, who is dead.